The Taiwanese cabinet on Thursday approved a supplementary defense budget that pushed total defense spending over $1 trillion in New Taiwan (NT) dollars for the first time.
\n\nThe supplemental budget of NT $145.7 billion was intended to fill some shortfalls in military procurement after the Taiwanese opposition cut about a third of the NT $1.25 trillion requested by the government over the next eight years.
\n\nThe New Taiwan dollar currently trades at around 0.0315 to the U.S. dollar, so the trillion-dollar milestone works out to $31.6 billion in U.S. dollars. This brings Taiwan’s defense spending for the year up to 3.83 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).
\n\n“There can be no gap in national defense,” the cabinet said in a statement Thursday. “National security cannot wait, the defence budget cannot wait, and defence self-reliance cannot wait either.”
\n\nThe supplemental budget restored money for domestically produced systems that had been stripped from the original defense budget by opposition lawmakers, including the Strong Bow medium-altitude anti-ballistic missile system.
\n\nThe Strong Bow is meant to build on the short-range interceptors Taiwan already fields, to create a multi-layered missile defense system. According to its designers, its radar can acquire inbound enemy missiles at longer…
Original source: https://breitbart.com/
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